Iceland boss wades into horsemeat row
As the boss of Iceland blames the local authorities for driving down the cost of food in schools and hospitals, Channel 4 News hears from both sides of the debate.
On Channel 4 News tonight, Iceland’s Malcolm Walker said it was not fair that the supermarkets were shouldering all the blame for the scandal. He put it to Councillor Mehboob Khan, who is the chair of the Local Government Association’s safer communities board, that local authorities drive the cost of meat down – with some hospitals spending little more than £2 a day on patients.
The debate follows calls from the Environment Secretary Owen Paterson for a Europe-wide overhaul of food testing in the wake of the horsemeat scandal. His comments came as Mark Price, chief executive of Waitrose, said that the rock-bottom price of certain meat products made cutting corners inevitable.
Horsemeat - the FactCheck update
In what has become a weekend of blame games, a former manager at the Meat Hygiene Service, now part of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), told a Sunday newspaper that he had helped draft a letter warning the government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) of fears over horsemeat in April 2011.
John Young told The Sunday Times that the letter, to former minister Sir Jim Paice on behalf of Britain’s largest horse meat exporter, High Peak Meat Exports, was ignored. It allegedly warned of the risk of contamination in meat products that could blow up into a scandal.
In the letter the company warned the government that its passport scheme, which was designed to stop meat containing the anti-inflammatory drug phenylbutazone, known as bute, getting into the food chain, was not working. The letter went so far as to call it a “debacle”.
Sir Jim said he did not remember seeing the warnings, telling the Sunday Times: “If this information was in Defra and was not being acted upon, it warrants further investigation. I would like to know why on earth I was not being told about it.”
Waitrose warns over ‘cheap’ food
Meanwhile the boss of one of the country’s leading supermarkets warned today that consumers could end up paying the price for the horse meat scandal, as ensuring food has the best safety guarantees means it can no longer be regarded as a “cheap commodity”.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mark Price, the managing director of Waitrose, said rising costs of rearing animals could mean that “somewhere along that long supply route, somebody has looked to cheat and take advantage of these circumstances either for their own personal greed or to keep a company afloat.”
Waitrose has not been affected by the scandal, which Mr Price puts down to its rigorous verification processes.
But he said that not every part of the food industry has been so diligent.
Read more: Can you trust your supermarket anymore?
“If meat is being purchased blind from outside the UK, and sometimes even via the internet in bulk, it is less easy to find those guarantees that full knowledge and traceability give,” he told the newspaper.
“If, at the same time, there is a requirement to hit a price point for consumers under financial pressure then there will be an inevitable strain in the supply chain.
“If the question is ‘Who can sell the cheapest stuff?’, I’m afraid it is inevitable that there will be a slackening of product specifications – even if, not as concerning the current situation, it’s less mint in spearmint gum or not as thick a layer of chocolate on your biscuit.”
He added: “The simple fact is that food cannot be seen as a cheap commodity when so many factors are working against that premise, including population growth, climate change, greater urbanisation, and the spread of Westernised diet in the developing world.”